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France Telecom reports £40bn debts
All of a sudden BT sounds like a model business...

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Thursday 06 September 2001

France Telecom has reported its spiralling debts have hit E65bn (£40bn) after a year of heavy spending on 3G licences.

The European UMTS licence auctions have left many mobile operators with massive levels of debt, but France Telecom and German counterpart Deutsche Telekom (£40.5bn) are occupying a level of indebtedness alien even to BT whose own £17.5bn overdraft seems meagre in comparison.

France Telecom's road to recovery has been forced to take an unwelcome detour by the current downturn besieging the telecoms sector. The company had hoped to get its debt down to around E30bn (£18.35bn) by 2003 but now concedes the market conditions mean it is likely to still be up around E59bn (£36bn) then.